D is for Delight-Psalm 37:4

Psalm 37:4

“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

For the last three weeks in our sermon series on Practical Christian Living–the ABCs, we have discussed A is for Accountability, B is for Beauty and C is for Community. Our Christian lives “work much better” when we are accountable, when we are enraptured by the beauty of Christ, and when we understand what a true community is, and not one imposed by the wish dream of others, which results in a pseudo-community.

Today we consider “D is for Delight.” Life would be unbearable or intolerable if we did not have delight or happiness in our hearts and lives. We cannot live without delight. Why? It is because our happy God created people to live happy lives. Indeed, God desires people to be filled with delight.

Theme: You gotta be happy!

In today’s sermon let us consider the following:

1. God made man for himself (Gen 1:26-27).
2. All of creation points to God (Ps 19:1; Rom 1:19-20; Col 1:16).
3. No man can live without happiness (Gen 2:8-9; Ps 16:11; 36:8; Jn 15:11; Gal 5:22; 1 Th 5:16).
4. Man is unhappy when he settles for less (Jer 17:9; Mt 13:22; Mk 4:19; 1 Jn 2:16; Heb 3:13).
5. Man’s ultimate happiness is found in God (Gen 15:1; Neh 8:10; Phil 4:4; Heb 11:6).

Before doing so, let us consider how we might find our delight in God. Ps 37:1-11 is as good a text as any.

• Don’t compare yourself with others (Ps 37:1, 7b).
• Trust God and do good and commit to him (Ps 37:3; Prov 3:5-6).
• Be patient (Ps 37:7a; Prov 19:11; Col 3:12; Heb 6:12; Jas 5:10).
• Refrain from anger and from losing your temper (Ps 37:8; Mt 5:21-22).
• Hope in God (Ps 37:9; Isa 40:31).
• Learn meekness and humility (Ps 37:11; Mt 5:3; 11:29; Phil 2:5-7).

1. God Made Us For Himself. Why did God create man? In his Confessions, St. Augustine says it best: “You have made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace till they rest in you.” In the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), Q1 asks, What is the chief end of man? Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God (Ps 86:9; Isa 60:21; Rom 11:36; I Cor 6:20; 10:31; Rev 4:11), and to enjoy him forever (Ps 16:5-11; 144:15; Isa 12:2; Lk 2:10; Phil 4:4; Rev 21:3-4). Being made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-27), God made us to find our peace, rest, joy, happiness and delight in him. God created us in such a way that apart from Him, our lives will be unfulfilled, incomplete and unsatisfying.

2. All of Creation Points to God. Ps 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Everything in all of creation points to the Creator. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”

In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis wrote something similar which says that all good things we experience in life point to God: “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them… These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

3. No man can live without happiness (Gen 2:8-9; Ps 16:11; 36:8; Jn 15:11; Gal 5:22; 1 Th 5:16). Blaise Pascal says eloquently, “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”

4. Man is unhappy when he settles for less. Again in The Weight of Glory C. S. Lewis says, “If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

5. Man’s ultimate happiness is found in God. Jonathan Edwards says, “The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, to fully enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean.”

Yes, all man needs delight. All people crave it and desire it. But to experience it we need to know our Ultimate Delight who created us with the utmost of delight and said, “It was very good” (Gen 1:31). But we lost our delight when we sought inferior and counterfeit delights. We can call this sin. We can call this idolatry. We can call it foolishness. As a result there was no longer any human possibility for people to ever truly genuinely experience delight….for we settled for far less. True delight would be forever lost.

But there is a way–a supernatural way, a way external to ourselves–to restore our delight. In fact the only way was when the Ultimate Delight lost His Ultimate Delight. This happened on the cross. Jesus had his ultimate delight. Jesus had never lost communion with his utmost source of joy (Heb 12:2). But on the cross Jesus lost his ultimate delight. Our Father in heaven also lost his ultimate delight in his Son. The Holy Spirit lost his joy because his ultimate delight was destroyed. But Jesus lost his ultimate delight so that we who have lost it may once again find it.

By Christ dying for our sins (1 Cor 15:3), we who have lost everything deservedly may once again find our delight through his resurrection (1 Cor 15:4) by the work of the Holy Spirit. Only this knowledge of the grace and mercy of God brings true and lasting delight to us human beings. Praise and thank God for his infinte mercies.